School: Clochar na Trócaire, Maghcromtha (roll number 10047)

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1. Saint Gobnait of Ballyvourney (continued)

   

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   thousand perhaps, or more.

   This is all the more remarkable when we consider how very meagre are the documented historical facts now existing concerning St Gobnait or her life work. The dates of her birth and death - even the exact periods at which she flourished - are apparently a matter of surmise. When John Colgan, the great Franciscan hagiologist was compiling his "Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae" three hundred years ago he learned that a manuscript life of Gobnait was still preserved somewhere in South Munster.

   Does this manuscript still exist, or has it been lost or destroyed like so many other treasures of its kind?

   Smith the historian of County Cork says St. Gobnait was a daughter of O'Connor, Sligo. This, according to safer authorities, is inaccurate. The careful Dr. Lanigan, for instance, has no doubt she was a native of Munster, and belonged to the race of Conair the Great, the High King. In the "Calendar of Cashel" (which like the "Martyrology of Donegal", coincides with Lanigan). She was born at Boiren now Ballyvourney in West Muskerry, probably at the close of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century.

   History is silent regarding the parentage and early life of the saint. Tradition however, tells that Gobnait was the daughter of a pirate and shrine-robber, and that being an only child left motherless in infancy, she scoured the main for several years with her father and his plundering crew. There is a beautiful legend of the circumstances in

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Cautie Murphy

   Gender

   Female

   Address

   Glasheen, Co. Cork